


Once more, with feeling!

by UMsArchive



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, parallel narration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 02:12:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11152029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UMsArchive/pseuds/UMsArchive
Summary: When he first choreographs Stammi Vicino, it’s hope. When he last skates it in competition, it’s surrender. That’s how he keeps it in his mind, until someone else skates it for him with a bit of that lingering hope he’s been yearning for.





	Once more, with feeling!

  At 5.40 PM, the last group of men’s division enters the ice for the warm-up. Victor Nikiforov is part of it and he’s prepared, he shines and glows, yet the world around him is fading in the bleakest of ways. There is no excitement or anxiety inside of him. It’s numbness, it’s a faint pain. It oddly fits the setting for his free skate. But that somehow doesn’t make it feel any better.  

 

_   Yuuri doesn’t watch the World Championship. He feels oddly disconnected. He’s been for months. Graduating college has come and gone like a blur. He surely doesn’t know how he did it. He definitely didn’t try his best. How would have that been when it was as though he was barely there all of the time? _

 

_ The inside of the inn suffocates him, still. There’s the sound of chatter coming from the recreational room, clinking of glasses and pouring alcohol and his mind is tired, but buzzing and fidgeting. _

 

_ He leaves the house around the time the warm up of the last group started. Not that he’s aware of that timing. He hasn’t checked anything skating related these days, anxiety crawling inside his skull and scratching -  pointlessly, hard to understand. He’s seen a glimpse of Vcitor as he passed by. He’s aware he’s skating today. Not when. _

 

At 6.30 PM - approximately - Victor Nikiforov enters the rink. He’s somehow barely breathing. It’s not anxiety. It’s not excitement. It’s just-

 

_ Yuuri takes position at the center of the Ice Castle rink. There’s no music to give him a start. It’s just him and- _

 

Victor! - the crowds are screaming his name. He feels an underlying dread. It’s not hard to allow the noise to fall in the background and pretend he’s all alone when he’s needing it so badly-

 

_ He’s alone - excepting Yuuko, but Yuuko has seen his earlier, lamest attempts at skating, so there’s no embarrassment he could fathom. It’s easy, with an empty stadium. No stakes. Just his love for skating, for all that has brought him to this point. And he bows- _

 

His head rises with the heightening of the note, answering a call he’s never got - at this point, it feels like a prayer, for anything, anything at all. And he throws his head back dramatically, almost with disdain, more in disappointment. And he follows - runs after - something, just SOMETHING he’s trying to reach. He kneels and jumps and-

 

_ -lands. He finds himself smiling, following the first spin. It fits. It’s a dance. There’s a partner he cherishes - isn’t that how the story goes? No loneliness, no heartbreak, but a lot of- _

 

-unresolved longing. Hopeless longing. 

 

It’s perhaps a moment too brief, too well fitting, when he comes to a halt, breath caught in his chest, head tilted down down just a bit - eyes wide and ghastly underneath the hair falling over: he just stands there. No motion. No pose. And in that moment he considers just… quitting, right then and there. The ultimate surprise for the man who lives to surprise: halfway through the routine, just stopping and skating right off the ice.

 

He doesn’t do it. Because he has no more surprises left in him - no more will to bear them and nowhere else to go if he-

 

_ He comes to a stop, keeping the ending pose. There’s one person cheering for him, but it means the world- _

 

The whole world is cheering for him, but it feels empty.

 

_ “Honestly, I thought you’d be depressed.” _

 

“You’re the World Champion once again - what’s with the depressed face?”

 

_ “I was.” _

 

“I’m just tired, Yakov.”

 

_ “But it turns out being depressed gets old after a while.” _

 

-still it doesn’t just go away.

 

_ “I lost my love for skating. And I wanted it back.” _

 

-but without any inspiration left to make it-

 

_ I thought if I copied Victor like we did in the old days, it’d help. Yuuko, I’ve been thinking-” _

 

“-of you.” Victor’s fingers linger across the screen, recognizing the familiar musical moves, as they were meant to be, mirrored in someone else. The man who’s lost and then danced with the cheer of a winner that Victor had lacked before him. The one who missed his season and persevered.

 

This routine of him uploaded online. This could be-

 

_ Oh no… Oh no! This could be a disaster! This could be- _

 

Hope. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by codenamecesare@tumblr (Original post: https://otabek-deserved-better.tumblr.com/post/161579333392/codenamecesare-this-is-the-point-in-stammi)


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